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My Nature Blog

Accidental Spore Print SUCCESS!

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Yesterday, I was putting the washing on the clothesline when I noticed a couple of small mushrooms nearby. I hadn’t done a spore print experiment in a while.

This is largely due to the many failures I’ve experienced. It is so demoralizing when I put a lot of effort into finding the fungi only for the spore print to fail.

I found some scratch paper that I’d bought for Glenn and put them on that. Then promptly forgot about them.

I returned after 8 hours and looked at the print. It is probably the best one I’ve ever done. Glenn is in love with it and thinks it looks like a galaxy. He is hoping to do ones of his own.

I see more spore print experiments in our near future.

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Nereididae Species at St Helens Boat Ramp

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We were exploring the critters at St Helens boat ramp recently when Seth discovered many of these worms next to the ramp. We hadn’t seen them before so Seth caught one in a net to get a closer look. I was concerned about it being out of the water for too long so only got a couple of photos.

I waited a while before putting them on Facebook, as I get concerned about asking too many questions. Being anxious and an amateur can make things interesting! It turns out is a type of polychaete worm in the nereididae family. I tried to do some Googling to help me identify species from this family…. and I think I ended up more confused than before.

According to this website

Nereidids are long and slender worms of medium size found among algae, gravel and shells on hard substrates, or digging into soft substrates. They are characterised, among other features, by well-developed parapodia, and an eversible pharynx with two prominent black jaws and small sclerotised teeth on the surface of the pharynx. During reproduction, many species leave the sea-bed and swarm towards the surface

The important features are the parapodia and pharynx. I tried looking up where the pharynx is with these worms, but had trouble finding any basic resources on where the pharynx is. According to one of the marine research group guides, it’s important to collect and photograph with pharynx everted.

In one of the photos, it looked like the worm had filiform branchiae, or gills. This meant that it could belong to the Marphysa genus. In 2018, the species in the genus were under review. A new paper came out in 2020, but I’m struggling to make sense of the current information let alone any new information. A lot of these papers aren’t accessible to the super newbie.

Another person commented that the worm was also an epitoke. According to Wikipedia,

Epitoky is a process that occurs in many species of polychaete marine worms wherein a sexually immature worm (the atoke) is modified or transformed into a sexually mature worm (the epitoke)

They swim towards to the surface during reproduction, so it makes sense that we would see sexually mature worms. The aforementioned pink branchiae were apparently ‘the additional lamellae of the epitoke’s modified parapodia.’

I’ve put pause on trying to learn more about these worms. I’m in waaaay over my head here. I’d rather focus on flatworms 🙂

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Bat Flowers At Geelong Botanical Gardens

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Last year, mum and I went to view the black bat flower at the botanical gardens. Mum loves the bat flowers. I’m kinda nonchalant, but really enjoy exploring the conservatory. It’s brilliant for black and white photography.

This time, we went to visit the white bat flower. Unfortunately, we visited towards the end of it’s flowering and it wasn’t looking the best.

Mum and I were gushing over the plant when this woman told us that there was a green one nearby. She was so lovely, showed us her photos and helped us find it. We also found what looks like bananas.

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